Many businesses have some sort of seasonality in regards to when they are busiest and slowest. A catering company might be busy during the holidays and during wedding season, but might have some slow points at other times throughout the year. In the B2B sector, there might be an increase in sales and leads towards the beginning of the year when businesses have their budget approved and have the means to make the purchase and there might be a drop off during the summer months when decision makers are taking vacations.
While these peaks and valleys allow business owners to plan ahead and understand when and where to spend their marketing dollars, one marketing function that shouldn’t ever be halted is an SEO program. SEO is a slow moving process and it takes time to build momentum, which is why it’s important to keep that momentum going once it has been achieved. It’s much easier to lose SEO success than it is to achieve it and scaling back on SEO can essentially be like starting all over again when you decide to ramp it back up.
Unlike other marketing campaigns, SEO needs to get underway long before the “busy” season begins. If you are getting in touch with an SEO firm when things are starting to get busy, it’s already too late for SEO to have much of an impact (for that busy season anyway). If you want your SEO to be in tip top shape for when your busy season begins, you need to start the process many months before. This is because SEO isn’t an immediate marketing solution. It’s not like running an advertisement that has a limited time offer and will generate business within a short time frame. This is due to the nature of the search engines. Whenever you optimize website content or publish a new piece of content online, it’s not going to get indexed right away and it definitely isn’t going to rank prominently on the search engine results page. This is because it hasn’t generated the trust that is necessary to succeed.
SEO takes a lot of ongoing work, typically years, to see a significant improvement in website visitors from the search engines which is why you can’t start and stop your SEO to coincide with when you are at your busiest. Content is a necessary component of SEO today, since it’s what the search engine spiders find and rank and it’s what gets shared in social media, improving social signals. It’s important to take advantage of your “slow” times to ensure that content will be published on a regular basis. When things get busy, content creation often gets put on the back burner which really can’t happen.
Seasonality is to be expected in business, but it’s important to plan for the busy periods by remaining active in SEO all throughout the year. This will give you the advantage that you need when it comes time for your target audience members to search for what you have to offer.